Science

Oxford today is known as a place of learning and elite scholarship. Several hundred years ago, the university town had something of a darker reputation. A deep dive into historical documents reveals that during the late medieval period in the 14th century CE, Oxford had a per capita murder rate four to five times higher

Earlier this year, the James Webb Space Telescope dashed hopes for life on one of the most Earth-like exoplanets discovered in the Milky Way. TRAPPIST-1b, a world 1.4 times the mass and 1.1 times the radius of Earth, just 40 light-years away, has no detectable atmosphere to protect it from the scorching radiation of its

Antarctica is looking less and less recognizable with each passing year. On land, scientists have found flowering plants, moss, and algae spreading like never before, and at sea, the extent of floating sea ice has hit record lows. These dramatic changes have coincided with rising summer temperatures. In 2022, researchers at the University of Washington

Brian Cavanaugh is senior vice president at American Global Strategies, an international strategic advisory firm based in Oklahoma City. He previously served in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the White House. A bipartisan group of lawmakers recently introduced the Space Infrastructure Act, which pursues a recommendation made by the Cyberspace Solarium Commission 2.0

A new species of tarantula found scurrying around the forests of Thailand shimmers with dazzling blue highlights. Its discoverers have named the beastie Chilobrachys natanicharum, and say it’s the first tarantula ever identified living in Thailand’s mangroves. Findings like these highlight the value of preserving these natural habitats, where unique species have carved out small

If you saw grains of sand rolling uphill you might be forgiven for thinking you were watching a Christopher Nolan movie. But scientists have recently figured out how a sand-like material can be made to flow back up slopes, without rewinding time. Researchers from Lehigh University in the US engineered tiny particles they call microrollers

The Vikings were notorious raiders, but they were traders too, establishing vast trade routes that flourished from the 8th to 11th centuries. A new study reveals some of those connections spanned surprisingly long distances, linking large urban trading centers with rural outlands where many natural resources originated. Researchers from the UK and Europe illustrate the

In an exciting milestone for lunar scientists around the globe, India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander touched down 375 miles (600 km) from the south pole of the Moon on August 23, 2023. In just under 14 Earth days, Chandrayaan-3 provided scientists with valuable new data and further inspiration to explore the Moon. And the Indian Space Research

For such a lush, verdant paradise, the Amazon rainforest’s soil can be surprisingly barren. Yet mysteriously fertile “dark earth” called terra preta can be found in patches across hundreds of sites, the origins of which have sparked debate among scientists. Now new research from the US and Brazil says ancient Amazonians intentionally enriched areas of

Wi-Fi signals can do much more than deliver streaming movies and music around the home, it turns out: they can also be used to identify shapes through solid walls, as demonstrated in recent experiments. The ability for Wi-Fi to spot movement through walls has been shown off before, but the technology struggles with seeing anything

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force for the second time has taken ownership of a retired National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather satellite to fill gaps in coverage for the U.S. military.  NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite known as GOES-15, originally activated in 2011, was transferred to the Space Force to extend weather coverage of

Over many thousands of years, a species of animal that shared a close relationship with wolves slowly morphed into something that loves to curl up in your lap, get belly rubs, and eat kibble three times a day. These changes in dogs weren’t just behavioral. In fact, the changes in body plan – like shorter

In 1687, Isaac Newton formulated his laws of motion and universal gravity, bringing the movement of distant stars, moons, and planets into focus. With the stroke of his quill, Newton’s pioneering work also triggered a centuries-long search for mathematical solutions to rein in chaotic triple systems, such as the Sun, Moon, and Earth, which researchers

There’s a line of thinking that says you can mentally manifest your way to financial success through believing it will happen – but this kind of aspirational mind trick is actually more likely to be linked to risky investments and bankruptcy, new research has found. Across three studies and a total of 1,023 participants from

In 1960, legendary physicist Freeman Dyson published his seminal paper “Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation,” wherein he proposed that there could be extraterrestrial civilizations so advanced that they could build megastructures large enough to enclose their parent star. He also indicated that these “Dyson Spheres,” as they came to be known, could

Marine heatwaves may last longer and be more intense in deeper water, potentially threatening sensitive species as climate change makes the extreme events more frequent, researchers said on Monday. Oceans have absorbed 90 percent of the excess heat produced by the carbon pollution from human activity since the dawn of the industrial age. Marine heatwaves

Our lives were already infused with artificial intelligence (AI) when ChatGPT reverberated around the online world late last year. Since then, the generative AI system developed by tech company OpenAI has gathered speed and experts have escalated their warnings about the risks. Meanwhile, chatbots started going off-script and talking back, duping other bots, and acting

KIHEI, Hawaii — Sierra Space conducted another test of its inflatable habitat technology, demonstrating that the module exceeds its requirements even with the addition of a window in its fabric structure. The company announced Sept. 20 that it performed the fifth in a series of tests of subscale versions of its Large Integrated Flexible Environment

The fossilized skull of a 455-million-year-old fish reveals an anatomy that’s completely new to the study of vertebrates, bridging a knowledge gap of 100 million years. Insights gained from studying the Ordovician jawless fish, Eriptychius americanus, suggest the early development of the vertebrate brain’s protective dome was more complex than scientists thought. “This fills a

For centuries, inventor, scholar, and artist Leonardo da Vinci has been lauded for his precise, well-proportioned drawings and imaginative designs. He grasped gravity’s similarity to acceleration a century before Newton, and his artworks were sheer genius in their perspective and geometry. But on closer inspection, it seems one of the rules da Vinci devised to

Generative AI – which encompasses large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT but also image and video generators like DALL·E 2 – supercharges what has come to be known as “digital necromancy“, the conjuring of the dead from the digital traces they leave behind. Debates around digital necromancy were first sparked in the 2010s by advances

A flawless new image from NASA using a clever mix of photographs from two different cameras has captured a crater on the Moon that has not seen the light of day for billions of years. The ancient pockmark, known as Shackleton Crater, is located in a mountainous part of the lunar south pole, where, due

When the ancient supercontinent Gondwana was torn asunder 83 million years ago, a huge chunk of it sank beneath the waves as it drifted away. According to some geologists, this submerged chunk – called Zealandia – would be considered Earth’s 8th continent, it weren’t for a thick layer of ocean water obscuring our view. Instead,

Ever since 1911, when British mycologist Michael Cressé Potter noticed that brewer’s yeast generated electricity, scientists have been trying to harness the power of microbial fuel cells. But the efficiencies of tiny, budding ‘bioreactors’ have been too low for practical use. What’s more, it turns out microbes can be surprisingly picky in what substrates they

WASHINGTON — CACI International’s optical communication terminal passed initial ground tests required to compete for Space Development Agency satellite contracts, the company announced Sept. 18. CACI, a defense contractor based in Reston, Virginia, said its optical terminal successfully completed an interoperability test, bringing it closer to meeting technical requirements set by the Space Development Agency

Dinosaurs have a reputation for being the most terrifying prehistoric predators, but a newly discovered skull sheds light on a fearsome beast that dominated 40 million years before the first ‘terrible lizards’ walked the Earth. The 265-million-year-old fossil found in Brazil reveals the largest meat eater of its time, one that prowled the jungles searching

Quantum behavior is a strange, fragile thing that hovers on the edge of reality, between a world of possibility and a Universe of absolutes. In that mathematical haze lies the potential of quantum computing; the promise of devices that could quickly solve algorithms that would take classic computers too long to process. For now, quantum

Repetition has a strange relationship with the mind. Take the experience of déjà vu, when we wrongly believe have experienced a novel situation in the past – leaving you with an spooky sense of pastness. But we have discovered that déjà vu is actually a window into the workings of our memory system. Our research

A huge invisible mass could be the reason the Milky Way’s disk is warped and twisted. A new study shows that a tilted, misaligned dark halo – the large blob of dark matter that wraps around and permeates our home galaxy – is the only explanation to date that explains all the features of the

Human activity and appetites have weakened Earth’s resilience, pushing it far beyond the “safe operating space” that keeps the world liveable for most species, including our own, a landmark study said Wednesday. ​Six of nine planetary boundaries – climate change, deforestation, biodiversity loss, synthetic chemicals including plastics, freshwater depletion, and nitrogen use – are already